Civilizational Contours and the Effects of the Russian Revolutions in the 20th Century

Abstract

Vladimir Kozlovskiy — Doctor of Science in Philosophy, Professor, Head of Department Sociology of Culture and Communication, St. Petersburg State University (SPSU); Director, Sociological Institute RAS. Address: 25/14, 7th Krasnoarmejskaya St., Saint Petersburg, 190005, Russian Federation. E-mail: vvk_soc@mail.ru

Citation: Kozlovskiy V. (2017) Civilizational Contours and the Effects of the Russian Revolutions in the 20th Century. Mir Rossii, vol. 26, no 4, pp. 7–29 (in Russian). DOI: 10.17323/1811-038X-2017-26-4-7-29

This article considers the civilizational contours, and the effects and consequences of the Russian revolutions in the 20th century, and sheds new light on the fate of the project of multiple modernities in Russia. The theoretical and methodological foundation of the study is the civilizational analysis developed in the works of Elias, Sorokin, Nelson, Kavolis, Eisenstadt, Arnason, as well as several Russian researchers: Shkaratan, Lapin, Rozov, Yakovenko. The logic of the civilizational analysis of Russian revolutions is based on establishing relationships between four basic sociological categories: social structure, institutions, culture and agency. The relationship between social structure and culture is most essential, because social conditions, causes, resources, groups, their motivation, behavior and actions are implemented in the forms of culture, key symbolic codes, norms and rules. This means that the dynamics of social structure and culture are functionally, structurally, and behaviorally determined; structure and culture are themselves reproduced by diverse social institutions, which in turn are executed and transformed by various social agents. Through this categorical scheme the article draws the civilizational contours and evaluates the consequences of Russian revolutions. A  number of destructive and constructive civilizational effects of these revolutions are outlined and compared. The main argument of the article is that the renewal of the social system in Russia, which followed the radical upheavals in 1917, implied an accelerated project of modernization and the building of a completely new civilizational order, which appealed to the broader population.